Water conflicts bind Californians together: Joe Mathews

Yes, we’re in a drought, but there’s still good reason to break out the sand bags: to protect ourselves against a flood of conventional media wisdom about California water.

As legislators and voters debate proposals for water infrastructure and bonds, TV stations have already declared that we’re in a “Water War.” And you are probably reading, again and again that water, as much as anything, divides California.

That is entirely backward. Water, more than anything, unites California.

Which is precisely why it’s such a big problem.

Anything that unites a place as big and diverse as California is going to create trouble. California’s water moves from the mountains to the coast, and from the rivers of the far north to the deserts of the south. It is the very scale of our water union that makes water such a fraught question. Complex politics and conflict are givens when so many communities and interests are tied to the same supplies.

What is remarkable about California is not our periodic battles over water but the enduring cooperation that allowed us to build this system in the first place.

Yes, we have neglected too much of this water infrastructure and are now seeing bills coming due. But the other big networks that unite California are arguably in even worse shape. We’ve gutted state support for our university systems. The prisons are such an unconstitutionally crowded mess that the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered us to release tens of thousands of inmates. Indeed, the state is so dysfunctional that frustration with California governance has itself become another binding agent, shared by people from the Oregon border to San Diego.

But water unites us more than any of these. After all, not everyone can get into California’s universities and prisons.

The real news in the drought is the announcement of the first-ever “zero allocation” in California. Our state and federal water projects have projected that they won’t be making deliveries of water — stopping water’s movement from north to south, and forcing regions to find alternatives. This is a shock to our water unity, because it raises the scary question of how much of the water that has connected California for decades will be there for us in the future.

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As you try to understand the public conversations around water, ignore the media fight promoters and focus on the question of water union. Will the drought or the water proposals before us loosen the ties that bind us —and force each region to rely more on local sources of water? Or will they bind us more closely to the existing water systems — connecting Californians more deeply but adding to our risk if climate change diminishes the water supply?

The water bond that Californians may vote on in November, and the proposed tunnels to take water from the Sacramento River under the Delta to supply the south, both come out of state government, and so they represent — quite naturally — the keep-us-together-in-water approach. At the same time, enlightened water districts around the state are embracing recycling, storage, and other means to boost local water supplies.

The irony is that California’s regions, by keeping and producing more of their water at home, may diminish water conflict. California state government and politics, after all, have become dangerously polarized thanks to centralized fiscal power in Sacramento. When the budget is tight, we all have reason to fight each other over the diminished supply of dollars. In the same way, we are all potential combatants when water is scarce. More regional independence, in water and in taxes, might well make us better neighbors, and better collaborators in managing the networks that bind us together.

It’s the paradox of this moment in California: to keep the state together, we may need to stand apart.